1.27.2006

Nothing is more unsettling than receiving a call from your mother, in hysterics, asking if you were alive.

I'll explain this...

My Mom frantically called me this morning to make sure I was alive because a friend of hers from California just called to express her deepest sympathies. My Mom had no idea what she was talking about, obviously, and the lady insisted that she had heard that I had died from a blood clot. My Mom immediately hung up on the woman and called my cell phone. Luckily, I answered.

My Mom's friend had read somewhere in an online obituary that Ryan Sumner, originally from Illinois then later Portland, Oregon, had died from a blood clot. She, for whatever reasons, automatically thought of me, and quickly called my Mom.

I'm indeed alive, but I must say that this whole ordeal has kind of freaked me out, especially when my Mom sent me an excerpt from the obituary that her friend had read:

In Other News...
R.I.P. RYAN SUMNER
Portland's community endured another loss on Saturday, January 14th, when local musician Ryan Sumner suffered a blood clot that traveled to his heart, leading to his death. Ryan Sumner was pronounced dead at 7:31 p.m. Saturday night at Mount Allister Hospital in Portland. Born on September 9, 1982, the not-quite 24-year-old had lived with a blood condition since birth. He was found by his roommate struggling to breathe. She rushed him to the hospital, where he died peacefully.


A memorial service for Ryan Sumner will be held Sat Aug 27 at Colonel Summer's Park, SE 20th and Belmont, 1 pm.

It's not healthy for me to hear/interpret information like this. It makes me think, and that's often dangerous.

1.23.2006

All I can do is laugh. It's funny, really.

Anywho, I have all of these random, meaningless chores on my mind. Everytime I remember one task I need to accomplish, it sends me into a frenzy of other tasks I always ignore and put off for "later"...as in never. Here's a compiled list:

1) Go to the Sprint kiosk in the mall and have the phone numbers transferred out of my old cell phone and into my new cell phone. This will help ease the pain of receiving tons of unknown calls that are followed up with disgruntled voicemails about how I never call anybody back. SWEET JESUS. This is why I avoid my voicemail. There are soooo many reasons why I avoid doing this, mostly because my old phone was ran over and is barely working, secondly I can't find my old charger to charge it up because it's dead, third I hate going to the mall even though I live 45 seconds away from it, fourth I'm not sure it's even possible to do this, which scares me because this means the disgruntled voicemails WILL NEVER END.

2) Throw away all of my old bills. I really need to invest in a paper shredder. However, I resist this idea because I recently watched a That's So Raven episode where Raven's dad has a paper shredder and he goes shred-crazy and shreds every paper in the house, including Raven's science project! Yipes! That was a sticky situation. So, I'm not going to get a paper shredder because I too would become addicted to shredding, and would consequently end up shredding Raven's homework. She'd be sooo mad at me and I wouldn't be able to sleep for weeks.

3) Seek help for my That's So Raven addiction. It's not healthy and people make fun of me for it. Raven doesn't even know me. I simply need to stop watching the back-to-back episodes at 6pm, Monday thru Friday. I'll also throw in the need to stop watching the back-to-back episodes of The Golden Girls at 5pm, Monday thru Friday. This might help stop my fantasy of being like Blanche when I get older. Hell, I'd like to be more like Blanche right, now. She's pretty sassy.

4) Do something about the 876 pairs of jeans in my closet. Especially since I never wear 871 of them. They're mostly A&F jeans that are too big, too holey, or too gross for me to wear any more. I like fitted jeans. I like jeans that flatter my ass, my legs, and my crotch. I do own all three of those features, so therefore I would like jeans that don't resemble a denim potato sack around my lower body.

5) Either buy some new glasses or start wearing my contacts. My eyes cannot take the squinting and blindness that they endure everyday from staring at these blasted computer screens. I despise my old glasses, and contacts feel foreign on my eyes, creating more problems rather than doing anything significant. People also always think I'm glaring at them, when in actuality I'm trying my best to figure out who is who and if they're ugly or not.

These 5 things haunt me in my sleep. For some reason, I keep having these recurring dreams that I'm either late for taking a biology test in high school, late for teaching my swimming lessons as the children weakly wade in the pool, causing me to scream in a wild frenzy. Buster hates it when I do that. It scares him a little. I also have dreams where I'm waiting tables (like I did when I was 16) and that I'm extremely backed up and forgetting peoples drinks and messing up bills (which I also did when I was 16) and I'll wake up with my heart racing and in a dead sweat. And anyone that knows me, knows that I hate to sweat. I can't help but notice that in all of these dreams, I'm somebody's subservient bitch. I'm never late in real life, more like 5 minutes early. However I do aim to please, and I try to go above and beyond people's expectations. Maybe this is another thing to add to my horrid to-do list.

Ryan, stop being a lil pansy bitch.

1.19.2006

Sweet.

I'm back to normal. No more deathly-ill food poisoning symptoms, no more bed rest, no more traveling...oh wait. Nevermind that. I'm heading out to Chicago tomorrow for work. Whoopee. Yet another proposal to present. I rocked the last one though, so if it goes like it did in D.C. -- all should be well. I'll be back Saturday, so fear not Iowa City.

So, yesterday I was at the Buzz waiting for my hair appointment and HELLO -- fell in love with a random person who happened to walk in. I'll divulge more about this as soon as I get more information. I don't want to give someone more credit than they deserve, like last time.

Sweet.

1.14.2006

Definitely just got over a horrible case of food poisoning. The worst part of it was that it was self-inflicted. The next time I offer to cook anything - re-think the situation.

1.09.2006

It's crazy how life changes.

Yeah...crazy. I've had the craziest week of my life, I think. I've never experienced so many ups and downs. I was happy. I was desperately sad. My face hurt from laughing so much. It was the first time I've sobbed in years. A plethora of emotions...well, a plethora of events. I rang in 2006 extremely intoxicated, yet extremely happy, too. A couple days later I'd find myself barely able to face the day, nor anybody. I have this thing where I can smile at people and act like the world is a beautifully perfect place. When, in reality, I just want to tell everyone to get the fuck out of my face. I'll grit my teeth, I'll look away. But I'll still smile and pretend everything is fantastic. Kelly Clarkson said that she's forced to fake a smile, a laugh everyday of her life. Yeah, me too. It's not because I'm fake. I'm not fake at all. I'm very real. It's only because I'm hurting. It's because I can't get through a sentence without that quiver of sadness that reveals itself in my voice, showing my weakness. That sparks a follow-up "What's wrong?" Don't even ask. I'd suddenly turn into Jessie Spano on speed. She's so excited, she's so scared. Me too.

Work. I'd kill for a moment to myself, a day with no expectations, a lifetime of living freely. Welcome to the real world. Work has nearly killed me. Awake at 4:30 a.m., in the office by 5. Deadlines are pushing my fingers, keeping my focus. There's no way around them. Work, eat, sleep, repeat.

My dog (aka my life) is sick. Very sick. There's nothing I can do about it either, except to keep some hope, and keep him happy. If in three weeks I become a manic-depressive psychotic wreck, it's because he's gone. Let's not think about that, though.

It's crazy how life changes.